So is Digital ‘technology’

?The Vic government defines digital technology as “electronic tools, systems, devices and resources that generate, store or process data”. So, based on this definition; in what way is ‘digital technology’ different from mere ‘technology’? Are they one and the same?

As one of my friends asked (thanks for the chat @Abhijit Abhayankar) – is digital a technology, is it a model, is it a strategy, what exactly is it? We constantly hear about ‘digitise this’ or ‘digitise that’ and everyone suddenly changing their CVs to speak about their digital expertise, but very few actually define this in terms of strategy or technology or data or information or process or whatever. In summary, my exceptionally intelligent friend said that he thinks digital isn’t even a technology, even though every Chief Information Officer suddenly renames himself/herself as Chief Digital Officer, denoting that Information Technology and Digitisation essentially mean the same thing!

Abhi is actually accurate in the assertion that digital isn’t even a technology platform, but I believe technology could often be a component of it! To draw a cricket analogy (apologies to the non-commonwealth denizens and non-cricket tragics), we discuss about umpires only when they have made a blunder (with DRS that human fallibility has been rectified to a large extent). Similarly, technology is often that ubiquitous, all-pervasive platform that enables digitisation at scale. We are aware of technology only when it fails! Consider the example of the home Wifi services disrupted. From an organisational standpoint, the concerns with technology fallibility are constantly decreasing with strategies like Blue-Green deployment – roughly equivalent to the DRS in umpiring terms! Of course, DRS comes into play after an incident has happened while blue-green deployment prevents one from happening!

I think digital goes way beyond technology and data. Let’s discuss what I believe are the foundational attributes to digitisation –

1.????Universal, equitable, inclusive access at scale, with no community or individual left behind. This essentially denotes a strategy & a platform that is Universal (all pervasive), equitable – easily accessible with limited/no barriers to entry and linearly scalable (adding resources has limited impact to speed, access, security etc). They key statement is – no individual or community or society should be left behind, thus; the model needs to be equitable and merit the sole arbiter for defining success.

2.????Sacrosanct rights like privacy, security, self-determination with ease of recourse to the law with no access constraints. Any strategy that is being implemented or platforms being developed need to protect user rights – without reservations. These can be data-usage laws like GDPR in Europe or privacy laws like Aadhar in India or it can be right to get off the grid or the right to access the law-keepers with no negative impacts. Any individual needs to have complete autonomy in the manner his/her information is collated, utilised, and deleted or in fact, whether collated in the first place. Nation-specific laws are mandated to enforce such rights with necessary rigour. This information can only be used to benefit the owner and only used for any other purposes (marketing, research etc.) only with explicit concurrence.

3.????Supports continuous innovation, disruption of existing business models with a built-in philosophy to reduce costs and friction. Any system we develop, any community we create, any organisation we build needs to consider that change is permanent, and these systems or processes or models must encourage and adapt to changes with minimal or no friction. Thus scalability, reliability, extendibility, usability etc become key paradigms and systems built need to consider transformative & disruptive changes – not just incremental ones.

As you can see, there is no mention of technology and no explicit mention of data. At a zoom call on digital strategy, a senior technology executive told me that technology is missing from my digitisation model, a group of data analysts and engineers claimed at another presentation that data is core to digitisation, and a strategist from a leading business consulting firm pointed out to lack of well, strategy as the core to digital models!

I believe digital is more than data, technology, processes, or strategy – it encompasses all of them and more. And my answer to all of them was similar - we need to rethink the modern industrial & management education and training constrained collaboration models where strategy defines business, business defines technology needs and data drives reporting and intelligence. The flat world with easy and inexpensive access to digital resources means businesses and governments need to think of user experience at the core of their strategy, building revenue models using available, disruptive technology, contextual data models and diversified talent base.